


Dragon Age: Requisition

by The_Whelk



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Backstory, Behind the Scenes, Feudalism, Fluff, Gen, Logistics, My First Work in This Fandom, Skyhold (Dragon Age), Working class hero, You think that food just APPEARS in the hall?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:40:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23574769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Whelk/pseuds/The_Whelk
Summary: Ser Eustace Morris, through no fault of his own own, finds himself in-charge of the supply chain for the most important organization in Thedas' history. He barely has time to keep logistics straight let alone keep choral society appointments.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	1. Ser Morris The Quick

"What? No. Absolutely not."

Ser Morris didn't even look at the request handed to him by the runner.

"But Ser." The runner said. He couldn't have been more then 14. "The University of Orlais has made this request before and Skyhold has always-"

"That's the problem!" Morris snapped the paper out of the young runner's hand. It was stiff parchment, high quality, like most requests of the Inquisition these days. Morris read it, running his hand through his blond hair which he swore he could *feel* thinning by the second. "The most esteemed college of yadda yadda humbly requests your service in- a geological survey- what a surprise." Morris slammed the letter down onto the piles of papers and maps and demands that gathered on and around his desk in the makeshift room they generously called the Quartermaster's Office.

"This is the forth 'geological survey' request in my limited tenure - they do realize a war is on or are they looking for a quick way to the extra fancy rocks? Are they building a museum or just earnest hobbyists?" The runner's black eyes went big and Morris relented, grabbing a parchment with the Inquisition sigil, talking as he wrote. "Tell your masters we will do all due process to fulfill their request if it happens to not interfere with official duties as we have always held the College Of Geology in great esteem and hope for fruitful collaboration in the future. " He signed it, sealed it, and handed it to the runner who took it and took off.

Morris stepped back a bit, eyes closed. The Quartermaster's office has no chairs, partly due to scarcity and partly cause Morris thought it kept everyone on their toes. The runner was quickly replaced by a woman in a white apron and leather cap, forcing Morris to realize there was an actual _line_ outside his office.

"Quartermaster Morris." she said.

 _Oh she thinks highly of herself_ he thought

"There is the growing problem of the wool in the prison."

Morris rubbed this temples. There was a red march of agitation going from his lower back to his shoulder to his jaw to his head. "You must be mistaken, I'm not in charge of the prisons- please take your inquiry to Lady Cassandra or-"

"It's not the prison Ser, it's what's inside them."

"Well that would be prisoners and again I'm not in charge of-"

"But you are Ser. You told me to put the excess raw wool there just a week ago."

 _A week ago!_ he thought _A Week ago he had more hair and a functioning nervous system_. He remembered the woman's face, small and nut-round. She was a village elder or-no! Representative of a group of villages, slightly south of Haven. He felt like a heel before stiffening his posture. 

"Yes, of course I did-" He pretended to look through a notebook. "It's not going well then?"

"Well the wool is going as fine as it can, so long as it's clean and dry M'lord. And we agreed the prison would be a good place to keep it, for the time being." She smiled in that punch-gut way village girls of a certain age can smile. "But as you well remember that raw wool was a gift from Crestwood villagers, bless their hearts, but now that shearing season is upon us many of me and mine shepards are wondering if Skyhold can even take our share this year."

 _Maker's cock_ He had forgotten about the Crestwood village wool gift. Of course they had nowhere to sell it, their castle had been just liberated from bandits and everyone's landlord status was up in the air. Never mind the lake full of demons. Giving it to the Inquisition was as good as anything and created a debt to be paid - all fine and good except the Haven-area villages had an established woolen payment to Skyhold, now in danger of a rams' wool glut about to overtake their already overburdened storage. 

"I'm very sorry for seeming distracted Mrs.-" _it came in a flash -"Sorthenn._ But you have my word the situation will be taken care of. Everyone will be paid. And the work of your dedicated people will not be in vain." 

__

She smiled and curtsied in a way Morris hoped wasn't sarcastic. "Thank you Quartermaster. "

__

"You are very welcome, but if you don't mind me being curt, I have a lot to get to today and many networks and threads to stay on top of." One of Ser Morris' perpetually jumpy underlings led Mrs. Sorthenn out as Morris himself look a quick trip out of the office, across the well-trod dirt path between the training grounds and the tavern and up the stone stairs to the roof-less guard tower. There, he closed the door behind him, buried his head into one of the burlap sacks of hay and screamed into it as loud as he could.

__

_All of this fucking happened_ he thought _because of a boy from Anderfels_

__


	2. Ser Morris The Resourceful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How did a nobody nobleman from a flyspeck hold end up Quartermaster? Well-

It was different in Haven, before Skyhold, when Morris was just one of the hundreds of people who'd shown up to help The Inquisition, before anyone knew what that meant.  
\------

Only a few days after Ser Morris appeared at Haven camp, wearing chipped armor and speaking a rough and impenetrable dialect of Orlesian, Quartermaster Threnn told him to switch to leather tunics and King's Tongue while working.

:"But the Chevaliers say my Orlesian is very good. I rarely get the chance to speak it at length." he dropped a crate of chicken feathers by Threnn's tent.

"They're making fun of you." Threnn said, scratching off items in her ledger, breaking up the frozen ink in her ink well with a glass pen. "You speak Orlesian strangely. They think it's funny. Like your armor. " 

"What's wrong with my armor?" 

:"It's old, you're dressed like and you sound like someone's great-grandfather. For the Chevaliers, it's amusing. Like a dog walking on hind legs."

Morris turned red in the cheeks. "It's what we had. When the Inquisition called for people I thought-"

"You thought everyone would come running and join in some great big effort where everyone was equal and working for the good of the world eh? " Threnn arranged her umber turban. "That's all I need to know. Your family is technically on the right side of the Frostback Mountains, but you haven't met many Orlesians, not the court kind anyway. You know who the Vulex and Vasels are?"

"From reading, they're an old family, on the secretive side. Not much for balls or parties."

"Yea- and how do you think they got that way? Someone's great great great great granddad killed another person's great great great great granddad and put the Vulex and Varsels in charge of collecting tax on every letter sent on the Imperial Highway. That's what the Chevaliers are here for. If this turns out to be a great and golden thing they'll want to make sure they're securing supplies lines or becoming sole providers. No one wins a grand title, they steal it."

Morris' face went white. Threnn switched gears, she forgot how young some of the noblemen were.

" Let this be a lesson tenderfoot, now go to the logging camp and confirm they have numbers for the barricades and firewood." Morris left, wrapping his cloak around himself and thinking about the armor tucked away in his tent, the armor his father cried giving him when he left for Haven, the armor his grandmother dutifully polished and made new leather straps for. 

Threnn wasn't entirely wrong. Eustace Morris came from a tiny prince-holding just northeast of the Arbor Wilds and deep enough into the Forstbacks to be invisible. Morris' father, the "Prince", knew almost all his tenant farmers by name. Morris remembers when they'd sleep in a pile, animals and all, in the main hall for warmth in winter. As the Prince's son, it was his job to herd sheep, keep fires dry, clear paths meet with Avaar traders, and dig wells. How else could the hold survive? The way he survived was letters. Say what you will about Morris' accent but his written Orlesian was *divine*, borne from hours in his father's library. The Morris family was related to almost every major house in Thedas, via marriage, coups, or cadet branches. They were both too connected too invade and too minor to care about. Ser Morris kept up regular correspondence with all the distant constellations of relatives, from third cousins in minor branches to brother in laws by marriage twice removed. It was how he fell for the words of a young Chantry firebrand, related via a cousin of a cousin to his own in Anderfels, who impressed on Morris the need to serve the Inquisition. The Anderfels boy, who spoke like a prophet and whom Morris would not admit to thinking about more and more each night, wrote about the need for sacrifice, for duty, and giving everything for the Maker and leaving nothing.

They even made an agreement to meet in Haven as brothers in arms, no doubt they'd recognize each other without being told, the Maker would will it.

Early on Morris allowed himself to imagine the meeting. An embrace, a soft kiss, then getting to work. Maybe they'd trade off bathing each other or washing wounds. They'd be strong when others couldn't and compassionate where no compassion grows. They would be in the Maker's light and beyond reproach, no mater what Morris wanted to do with him in the dark.

After a few weeks of stuffing pillows, stacking cordwood, and hauling pig shit, no one recognized Ser Morris, archaic armor or not. 

It would've been sobering, but then Haven was attacked by a dragon.

In the post siege of Haven chaos, with Threnn screaming she couldn't work for an Orlesian Inquisition, with bodies everywhere and fires on all sides, Eustace Morris made the bravest, stupidest act of his young life.

In a converted dairy cart with Commander Cullen and Sister Nightingale, he pulled out all his recent correspondence proving he was a well-connected man with many threads and ties. Never mind half of them were about grandmother's gout or a sister-in-law's trouble finding foothold at the Winter Palace. The spread was impressive, the seals and sigils real, and Ser Morris became the Quartermaster for the Inquisition in Skyhold.

No Anderfel second cousin twice removed could say they didn't know where to find him now.

\------  
Ser Morris smoothed his hair, composed himself, and walked back to what was called his office. He assured everyone in line he would meet with them in an orderly and professional fashion.

The first thing he did was call for a stool so he could sit down at his mess of papers and maps and ledgers. 

"Okay we have excess raw wool." He glanced over at a notice that scouts were planning to enter Emprise du Lion. "Excess raw wool can be felted into insulation for tents, the Empris is freezing, get the soldiers on it they're dying for distraction." He turned a few pages in the ledger. "Also, the villages near Radcliffe, we're still riding off goodwill there? Yes?" One of his underlings nodded. "See if we can get them to spin us some blankets and socks. An Army runs on dry socks. Crestwood isn't up and running yet anyway-" Morris closed the book. "Anything else just put into insulation but reserve a measure for clothing that we don't have yet. I want a storage - if we really have too much let's talk to the Avaar. I have a personal in, and we could use some of their mining work, if it comes to that."

His underlings nodded again and Morris opened a new requisition letter from the Hinterlands. 

"What the Void is a Ferelden lock?"


End file.
